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It's telling of HN's demographic bias that you'd think Windows "would become a very serious contender to macOS". There are far more people using Windows than m

by pluma 7y ago

It's telling of HN's demographic bias that you'd think Windows "would become a very serious contender to macOS". There are far more people using Windows than macOS, even among developers, even if you only look at the US.

rbanffy 7y ago
In these days when 32 gigs is the norm for developer laptops, I'd assume anything that can run a VM full screen is good enough.
SiVal 7y ago
I'm pretty sure the GP meant that Windows would become much more attractive to current Mac users, and I agree. A lot of serious computer work is done on Macs, because the Mac client has so much in common with the Linux server. If MS put a Windows shell on top of a Linux kernel, Windows would suddenly become a better complement to Linux servers than the Mac ever was, while still enabling work tools such as Photoshop to still be used (unlike, say, an Ubuntu client). That would make Windows a serious contender for the market of people doing production work on Macs.
- pluma 7y ago
  You might want to pay more attention to WSL2 then. I'm a web developer who switched from Ubuntu to Windows earlier this year and WSL has very much been a "best of both worlds" solution. Continuous improvements to VS Code and Windows Terminal have made this transition very painless and WSL2 promises to eliminate most of my remaining pet peeves (e.g. improving Docker integration). The only downside is that the filesystem is much slower but that's only a problem when compiling native software.
  - crispinb 7y ago
    With WSL2, the filesystem is faster than 'native' windows (as long as you stay within the ext4-formatted image), which obviates one of the big Windows irritants for developers. The one downside of WSL from my perspective is all the small impedance mismatches, wslpath hacks, etc that result from having to work with the two filesystems. And though VS Codes's remote extension makes working on WSL entirely seamless, the situation is messier with other tools. IntelliJ, for example, has some WSL support in individual plugins, but it's patchy enough that I found running the Linux version via an X server more convenient.
- arvinsim 7y ago
  Yeah, you elaborated on what I was trying to get at. I own both a MacBook Pro and PC desktop. If Windows is as easy to develop in as MacOS, I would move my main work there. There are developments in there that I appreciate like Windows support for Homebrew.

by pluma 7y ago

rbanffy 7y ago

In these days when 32 gigs is the norm for developer laptops, I'd assume anything that can run a VM full screen is good enough.

SiVal 7y ago

I'm pretty sure the GP meant that Windows would become much more attractive to current Mac users, and I agree. A lot of serious computer work is done on Macs, because the Mac client has so much in common with the Linux server. If MS put a Windows shell on top of a Linux kernel, Windows would suddenly become a better complement to Linux servers than the Mac ever was, while still enabling work tools such as Photoshop to still be used (unlike, say, an Ubuntu client). That would make Windows a serious contender for the market of people doing production work on Macs.

pluma 7y ago
You might want to pay more attention to WSL2 then. I'm a web developer who switched from Ubuntu to Windows earlier this year and WSL has very much been a "best of both worlds" solution. Continuous improvements to VS Code and Windows Terminal have made this transition very painless and WSL2 promises to eliminate most of my remaining pet peeves (e.g. improving Docker integration). The only downside is that the filesystem is much slower but that's only a problem when compiling native software.
- crispinb 7y ago
  With WSL2, the filesystem is faster than 'native' windows (as long as you stay within the ext4-formatted image), which obviates one of the big Windows irritants for developers. The one downside of WSL from my perspective is all the small impedance mismatches, wslpath hacks, etc that result from having to work with the two filesystems. And though VS Codes's remote extension makes working on WSL entirely seamless, the situation is messier with other tools. IntelliJ, for example, has some WSL support in individual plugins, but it's patchy enough that I found running the Linux version via an X server more convenient.
arvinsim 7y ago
Yeah, you elaborated on what I was trying to get at. I own both a MacBook Pro and PC desktop. If Windows is as easy to develop in as MacOS, I would move my main work there. There are developments in there that I appreciate like Windows support for Homebrew.